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"" If""' ' th Call Toll Free- í \ '. ", jl 877-723.676 6 ' . I' ' \ ::.:;" or order online at: \l, tI.J.ï!:ardwoodgallery .com Undiscovered Italy "_pP , ;::! :Z:: j ci "'< THE PARKER COMPANY FREE CATAêQ<4 .":-.;. :-.......:.: . .: :.; '';:.:.' . :.:;;;-- ::: Y::. ::::":::-: (::-:.: :. :.;::.:: . , . .theparkercompany.com 800-280-2811 Act of 1958. In "the present emergency;" the act explained, "the national interest requires . . . that the F edera1 Govern- ment give assistance to education for programs which are important to our defense." These were identified as sci- ence, mathematics, and modern foreign languages. The National Defense Education Act of 1958 paid for loans to students; for equipment needed to teach science, math, and foreign lan- guages; for "national defense" fel- lowships for graduate students; ) and for testing and guidance ser- I I vices. It established centers for the study of foreign languages and supported research on the use of the media for educationa1 purposes. The fields targeted by the act were the ones that benefitted most, but every area in education benefitted to some degree, because resources put into one area from outside free up resources for others. The baby boom was already I kicking in, and the National Defense Education Act of 1958 started a steady flow of funding for educational institu- tions. In the same period, the economists Theodore Schultz and Gary Becker were developing the concept of human capital, which figured an educated cit- izenry as an economic asset and, by in- ference, a national-security priority. Ru- dolf Flesch had prevailed. " T he Cat in the Hat" was published in March, 1957, seven months be- fore Sputnik. Within weeks, it was sell- ing at a rate of twelve thousand copies a month. Random House's publisher, Bennett Cer contrived to sell his trade edition to the schools through jobbers, and he ended up acquiring the textbook rights from Houghton Mifflin. And 1957 was the peak year of the baby boom. In 1945, the last year of the war, 2.9 million children were born in the United States. In 1952,3.9 million were born: these are the children who were five years old when "The Cat in the Hat" came out. In 1957, 4.3 million children were born, still the largest co- hort in American history. By 1960, "The Cat in the Hat" had sold a million copies. By 2000, it had sold 7.2 million hardcover copies in the United States alone, making it the ninth best-selling children's hardcover book of all time. It 152 THE NEW YOR.KER, DECEMBER. 23 & 30,2002 was translated into many languages, in- cluding Latin: "Cattus Petasatus." The success of "The Cat in the Hat" persuaded Cerf to start a division at Random House called Beginner Books, and he put his wife, Phyllis, and Geisel in charge of it. They shamelessly appropri- ated poor, forgotten William Spauld- ing's model. Phyllis Cerf made a list of three hundred and seventy-nine words, taken from primers. Authors could choose two hundred words from this list, and could add twenty " " d fth . emergency wor s 0 elf own. Beginner Books started with four titles in 1958. By 1960, it was bringing in a million dollars a year. Random House became the largest publisher of chil- dren's books in America; a third of its total sales volume was in juvenile books. A hundred Beginner Books were eventually published. One was "Green Eggs and Ham," in 1960. Bennett Cerf had bet Geisel fifty dollars that he could not write a book using just fifty words. Geisel won the bet. Forty-nine of the words in "Green Eggs and Ham" are one-syllable words. (The fiftieth, of course, is "anywhere.") Cerf didn't come out too badly, though. "Green Eggs and Ham" was the most successful book Dr. Seuss ever wrote. It is the fourth best- selling children's hardcover title of all time. (The No.1 best-seller is Janette Lowrey's 1942 blockbuster, "The Pokey Little Puppy:") "The Cat in the Hat" transformed the nature of primary education and the nature of children's books. It not only stood for the idea that reading ought to be taught by phonics; it also stood for the idea that language skills-and many other subjects-ought to be taught through illustrated storybooks, rather than primers and textbooks. A few years after "The Cat in the Hat" came out, four- color reproduction became economically feasible. At the same time, the National Defense Education Act of 1958 and its successors were pumping money into school libraries. There was an apparently insatiable market for children's books with educational potential, and this drew many writers and artists into the field. Children's lit was a Cold War growth in- dustry; right alongside Boeing, Northrop, and Dow Chemical. I am one of the 3.9 million Ameri-